Sts. Cosma and Damian's Monastery

The Sts. Cosmas and Damian Men's Monastery stands by the healing Savluk-Su spring within the Crimean Nature Reserve near Alushta, in the Simferopol eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church¹.

The spring had long been considered healing and drew Christian and Muslim pilgrims alike, and several traditions survive about the origin of this veneration¹. According to one, Saints Cosmas and Damian appeared in a dream to a sick shepherd and told him to immerse himself in the water for healing and to return here every year with prayer¹. According to another, a pious elder saw the saints themselves at the spring and later found their icon there¹. According to a third, Saints Cosmas and Damian appeared to a woman who had been blinded and abandoned in the mountains, and restored her sight when she washed with water from the spring¹. At the end of the eighteenth century, the priest Kostiantyn Spirandi found a marble icon bearing their images buried in the ground by the spring¹.

Half a century later the spring was visited by Archbishop Innokentiy (Borysov): having inspected Crimea's holy sites after his appointment in 1848 to the Kherson-Tavria see, he began petitioning to found monasteries there, including at this spring^{1, 2}. By a Synodal decree of 4 May 1850, Archbishop Innokentiy was informed of the sovereign's assent to open the Bakhchysarai skete with its kinovias, including a kinovia at the spring of Saints Cosmas and Damian².

That same year Archbishop Innokentiy petitioned for 4 desyatinas of land around the spring for the kinovia, and in 1872 a further 19 desyatinas were allotted by tsarist decree². Before the kinovia opened, in 1851, the spring's guardianship was entrusted to the priest of Alushta's Theodore Stratelates church, Dmytro Chernyaev, and the warden, the merchant Andriy Korotenko: on a clear winter morning in late December they rode to the deserted spring, saw only the tracks of deer and goats in the snow, and blessed the water with prayer². The Crimean War of 1853-1854 delayed the kinovia's opening².

Funding for construction came, among others, from the Simferopol merchant Ivan Sanyutin: healed of a long fever by bathing in the spring, he vowed in gratitude to build a small church over the spring with bathing houses and several cells². Archbishop Innokentiy bequeathed a hundred shares of a steamship company to the skete and the kinovias; the Sts. Cosmas and Damian kinovia's share was nine, sold for five thousand rubles and invested in government bonds, whose interest supported the community².

In 1856 the hieromonk (later abbot) Makariy (Prutskyi) was sent here from the Bakhchysarai Dormition house as the new community's builder; on 10 September 1857 he was appointed its first superior^{1, 2}. In 1857 a small wooden church of Saints Cosmas and Damian was consecrated here, and in 1870 a spacious wooden church of the same dedication replaced it on the same site¹.

In 1874 the brethren, funded by voluntary donors, began building the heated Transfiguration church; construction was interrupted for a time by Father Makariy's death, and he was buried inside this church, which was consecrated only in 1878^{1, 2}.

In 1891 a stone chapel replaced the original wooden one over the spring, with a bathing pool divided into men's and women's sections^{1, 2}.

On the patronal feast, the house drew a great many Christian and Muslim pilgrims from across southern Ukraine and the Caucasus; hotels could not accommodate everyone, a camp of carts formed by the monastery, and in the cold season the house was cut off from the outside world¹.

Members of the imperial family visited the kinovia more than once: in 1873 and 1880 it was visited by Tsesarevich Alexander Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Alexander III, together with Tsesarevna Maria Feodorovna, and in 1911 the spring was visited by Emperor Nicholas II, who prayed there². A tsarist hunting lodge was built near the monastery².

The Sts. Cosmas and Damian Monastery was a men's house for 43 years, from 1856 to 1899: the first twenty years, under Abbot Makariy, were considered a time of flourishing, and the years that followed a time of decline from the frequent turnover of superiors². In July 1899, by a decree of the Most Holy Synod, the monastery was converted into a women's house; the dean-nun Varsonofiya was transferred here from the Toplo Convent of St. Paraskeva and appointed abbess, and twenty-five sisters settled with her^{1, 2}. Under Abbess Varsonofiya the house was thoroughly repaired and expanded².

On 30 July 1923, by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, the Crimean State Nature Reserve was established, and the monastery's grounds were included within its territory^{1, 2}. On 5 October 1923 the house was closed by a resolution allotting it as a labor colony, and before long a colony of disabled persons named for Kalinin was set up at the monastery; at the reserve's demand, a resolution of 4 January 1924 transferred the house to the reserve, the colony was moved out, and the monastery's churches were closed the same year^{1, 2}.

Despite this, a monastic community remained at the house: the nuns formed an artel and continued monastic life, setting up a church in the former prosphora bakery^{1, 2}. The community was finally dissolved in 1928; that same year Alushta's city executive committee planned to dismantle the chapel over the spring for building materials, but the reserve saved it by securing the intervention of the People's Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoliy Lunacharsky¹.

In the former monastery estate the reserve placed its administration, turned the Transfiguration and Sts. Cosmas and Damian churches into a club and a natural-history museum, and the cells into apartments and laboratories; for several years the reserve was headed by Oleksiy Mokrousov, a noted Crimean partisan commander from the civil-war era^{1, 2}. During the Second World War, trying to dislodge partisans sheltering on the reserve's territory, German forces burned every building of the former house together with the tsarist hunting lodge; only the chapel over the spring survived^{1, 2}.

In 1994 the house's revival began: on 26 April the eparchy received back the monastery's territory and buildings, and its charter was re-registered with the Council for Religious Affairs under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine^{1, 2}. On 14 July 1994, Archbishop Lazar of Simferopol and Crimea served a festive liturgy in the chapel over the spring².